- cross-posted to:
- shitposting@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- shitposting@lemmy.ml
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If I’m going out to eat somewhere, it’s mostly because I’m out to socialize or get away from screens. The last thing I want when I sit down at a restaurant is for everyone at the table to get out their phones. I can’t think of a dumber way to undermine restaurant socializing. Just charge me the $0.03 it cost to print the menu.
Me: “Oh I’m fine with scanning QR codes for menus, actually.”
[QR code goes to Facebook]
Me: “Guess I’ll starve after all.”I would leave a negative review, and tell the GM off for using fascist platforms
I’ve worked in Tech for 30 years, done software development in enough areas and at a sufficient senior level to be able to implement the whole QR code support, both coding and systems design, all the way from an App in a smartphone taking a picture and translating into a URL, to the webserver and if needed database on the other side including if needed an ordering system integrated with some internal order request system.
If I was faced with this I would ask for them to bring me or show me a menu. If they said “no” I would literally get up and leave.
I’m not going to be spending time mucking about with my phone to read in it’s comparativelly small screen something they could have available on an A4 piece of paper or an even larger format hanging from somewhere in the restaurant just to, at best, save them a few cents or, at worst, satisfying somebody’s totally misplaced idea that any Tech is cool just for being Tech. I’m even less going to enshittify my smartphone experience with some app that demands access to my Contacts and wants to pester me with notifications entirelly for the benefit of somebody else.
If there is one thing 3 decades in the Industry, often at the bleeding edge, have taught me is that Tech isn’t necessarilly the best solution for everything and that being newer doesn’t make something better and I’m not interested in being the beta tester for some half-arsed solution which serves most customers’ requirements worse than the older solution and I’m even less interest in installing a software agent doing the will of somebody else on my phone.
It’s exactly because I know Tech so well that I just judge Tech tools as I would any other tools and, damn, so much of it out there are just horrible ill-adjusted unstable tools worse than the old-Tech or non-Tech versions.
somebody’s totally misplaced idea that any Tech is cool just for being Tech
Nah, it’s worse than that. It’s somebody’s totally awful idea that they can meddle with their menu prices in real-time and do “surge pricing” and other schemes to rip you off. If they committed to a paper menu they would have to honor that printed price in most jurisdictions, which would preclude them from such shenanigans.
Digital menu
Pros: You can change it at any time, no problem. You can let them order digital and the register automatically checks in the order.
Cons: can’t read shit on a smartphone.
Solution: Big tablet for each table. Now everybody can read it.
But you have to spend a lot more on tablets than you would 5 years printing new menus.
Yupes.
My problem is that for me as a customer their chosen “solution” (me using my phone to see their easy to change menu) provides me no gain whatsoever whilst adding hassle. There are various possible options they could’ve gone with (blackboard, digital system with tablets for customers, printed piece of paper) with various balances of cost and ease-to-change and they chose the one that maximizes their advantages, minimizes their cost (and maybe it doesn’t even do that properly compared to, say, a blackboard) and increases hassle for customers.
In other words, in their requirements for the solution they’ve chosen to use, they focused entirelly on what was best for them and screw the customer, and if I have a choice I’m not going to bring my custom to a business which has activelly chosen to make my life more of a hassle purelly for their own gain.
Even though they’re using Tech for what they’re doing, the actual problem for customers is a Tech-agnostic “they did what was best for themselves and made the customer experience worse”, and maybe because of my immense familiarity with Tech I really don’t get dazzled by there being lots of Tech in their choice and just look at it from a “what does it do for me” point of view (a way of looking at business practices which itself derives from my professional experience: since I both worked on and implemented Business Requirements I got used to look at systems from a “what does this provide to the user” angle as part of the work of designing such systems).
I just “love” how scammers and the such have started plastering their own QR codes over legit ones. You scan a public QR code and go to a fake website.
Whenever QR code accessible site that asks your information should NOT be used as there is a legit chance that some scammer will be receiving your info instead of the actual site
There are only three ways to get me to leave a 1-star review.
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This shit
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A screen on the card machine begging for tips. Fuck right off
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Brioche does not a burger bun make, Oli or Tom or whatever your wanky hipster name is
Is the brioche in your third point sweet? that would be kinda weird.
Here in France brioche is kinda like cake bread: flour, salt, yeast, sugar, eggs, a fuckton of butter.
In America all bread is so full of sugar that it’s all cake bread. Brioche in America is a cake bun.
Last one I had was in Lyon, coincidentally! Genève before that
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I will not. I refuse to get a smartphone.
“Are you using the app today?”
“No.”
Once, I was given a real menu and then told to use the QR code to place an order.
I said, “No.”
“But you have to.”
“Haha, no.”
I showed her what I wanted and put the menu back in her hands. She left dejected and returned wordlessly with my food.
Don’t be a technocrat when I’m hungry.
I could understand using qr codes in a self service restaurant, but when the server is right here? This reeks of the owner being wormtongued by a salesman.
So the business still got your money? I guess it’s a difficult decision when one’s hungry.
type “LMAO”, show her the phone with a dead serious face and leave
Borderline germaphobe here. Get that disgusting, sticky menu as far away from my food or my fingers as possible. I fucking love the QR code menus.
That said, if it directs me to the app store, I’m not only leaving, but you’re getting a 1-star review. I’d take the germs over that bullshit any day.
Username checks out
I walked into some local burger joint, they had a qr code.
no menu above the counter like 99.9% of all other places.
when I asked for a menu, they told me to scan the qr code. I said no. they asked why. told them that I don’t like to be tracked. they said it helps them out. I just left.
place is closed now, at least I don’t see the lights on at night anymore last time I drove by.
There’s a classic burger joint near me that’s been around generations. A few years ago the quality dipped, and eventually it got sold to a restauranteur who’s done well in the area. They really turned it around. Service, food, cleanliness was all night and day to the previous owner. Then they became a victim of their own success. They wanted to make more money so instead of being a sit wherever you like, order from the counter place, now it was table service only with a strict 90 minute time maximum. The outdoor games that the kids loved have been shelved for more tables. The menus are all on QR codes, and you can only pay through your phone. I walked up to the empty bar one day to order a beer. “Sorry sir, you have to order from your phone, I can’t even process payments here.” So instead of drinking 3 or 4 readily available beers, I got 1 that the server took forever to bring. They include a default gratuity even though they are doing the absolute bare minimum when it comes to service. The food is still phenomenal, but I absolutely hate going and will pick a place I know is not as good to not have to put up with this place.
Lol wut? You can’t pay with a credit card? I’ve literally never seen that in my life.
Edit: aside from cash only. I mean I’ve never seen where you can pay with your phone electrically but not use a card.
Credit cards have fees and not all business want to pay them. A place by me used to be cash only until 2015 and they finally started taking debit, still no credit.
The credit card fees are fucking heinous bullshit. Even doctors offices are doing them…i know it’s the fault of the credit card companies but holy fucking shit.
Lol you people are so edgy, don’t worry you’re very cool with your stories of rejecting menus and being a dick to waiters who have no say in the matter.
No wonder COVID had no trouble spreading if everyone is so insistent on holding soggy stained menus in their hands. I love digital menus, don’t need to touch anything, there’s enough for everyone, why the need to always be a contrarian?
Now go ahead and downvote me, my
bodyaccount is readyNot everyone has smartphones. And speaking of Covid, not having a smartphone bit me in the arse because many businesses only accepted digital vaccination certs. I survived that, though, and I’ll survive not giving business to places that require you to have a smartphone.
“I only have a work phone. I’m not supposed to do those.”
Fun with QR codes! Two things are on the top of my mind today.
My boss loves QR codes. He wants to put a QR code on every single publication we print, for any reason, or often for no reason. To this day, he does not understand that QR codes are not magic, and all they contain is a link. I can’t make the QR code “do” this, that, and the third thing he wants; I have to program our web site to do whatever it is. When he is explaining what he wants, he is inevitably tracing his fingers around in the air making a box shape, as if this means anything.
His latest brainwave was trying to make me put QR codes on internet banner ads. Which are displayed on the viewer’s screen. ~90% of which are viewing on their mobile device to begin with. I had to explain to him using small easily understandable words that you cannot make a phone take a picture of itself. (Yes, I left the topic of screenshots out of it.) The fact that the banner ad is not only inherently clickable but being clickable is really rather the entire point, and this click directs the user to anywhere we want – say, the same place as his mythical QR code – did not sink in for him.
He also doesn’t get that merely generating the pixels of the QR code does not automatically create the landing page and all of its content. He also doesn’t grok that, to the nearest decimal place, nobody scans the fucking things on our literature anyway. Like I don’t track that kind of thing.
But I have a theory as to why, now. Thing the second is that just today I had a customer tell me, “I won’t scan them QR code things because I saw on the news they’re all controlled by the Chinese government.” (Our quotes have a QR code at the top you can use to view the products therein on our web site without having to type anything. It’s practically the only genuinely useful thing we do with them.) I had to demonstrate to him right there and then that the QR code is literally just a block of text, and you can see every single damn fool character in it before you visit whatever link it is if you feel like it and/or don’t trust it. Our QR codes clearly just go to our web site, with a ?products=[list] tacked on to the end of the URL.
I am positive he didn’t get it.
I’m positive my boss still doesn’t get it, either.
Whatever, it all pays the same.
I dare you to make a QR code for something that hotlinks to another QR png!
Most bosses like this in tech are dazzled by sales team but what got your boss to get such hard-on for QR codes?
Jesus christ it must be painful working for such a massive moron.
Im so sorry. i dont know how you dont go bald from pulling your hair out
On my phone, you don’t need to screenshot to use QR codes. I can just use the Google Lens app to scan it, or reverse image search something without even closing my Brave browser.
Atleast on IOS, holding your finger over an image with a QR code will activate the QR code, so he’s not entirely off his rocker dude….
And a lot of people don’t have Iphone or, as I do, have phones that don’t have such capabilities (I expect that this type of stuff is present in modern android phones but mine doesn’t has such stuff).
Sure, but in this context guess what happens if you don’t hold and you just tap it.
…
The same thing, but with fewer steps.
Then the menu is a broken webpage with “old” prices and the restaurant tries to charge you more than the menu prices. I thought the point of these were to be easily updated.
Generally the best places to eat is where the have a simple single white A4 print out of a menu on a clipboard.
Why not use a blackboard on the wall for prices that change everyday? Why everything needs to be unnecessarily complicated?
Because a guy can only sell you a blackboard one time, and you can get chalk anywhere. When it’s online, some tech company can sell you their Menu-as-a-Service every month.
Why would a restaurant pay for that? Look elsewhere in this thread for the story of the boss that thinks QR codes are magic spells or something.
Restaurant: Best I can do is a PDF, which I don’t have the original to update it anymore.
Nah, a series of JPEGS. Which are displayed in a little Javascript carousel, which automatically flips the pages every 7 seconds without any user input and can’t be stopped from doing so.
You laugh. There’s actually a restaurant around here whose website works that way. You have to kill the script from console if you don’t want to drive yourself insane.
If it just takes me to a website with the menu, fine.
If it takes me to the app store, no.
But then they typically still want your name, address, phone number, email address, gender, etc.
I just want some food.An app which is just a webview of the site.
How else are they supposed to pester you with notifications?
I’m nowhere that old and I still make the same face when a restaurant doesn’t have paper menus.
